David Graham Phillips, 1867-1911 David Graham Phillips was born on October 31, 1867; he was an American journalist of the muckraker tradition and novelist. Phillips was born in Madison, Indiana. After graduating from high school, Phillips entered Asbury College (now DePauw University) -- following which he received a degree from Princeton University in 1887. Phillips then worked as a newspaper reporter in Cincinnati, Ohio, before moving on to New York City where he was employed as a reporter for The Sun from 1890 to 1893, then columnist and editor with the New York World until 1902. In his spare time, Phillips wrote a novel, The Great God Success, that was published in 1901. In January 1911, Phillips was shot outside the Princeton Club at Gramercy Park in New York City. The killer was a Harvard-educated musician named Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough who thought that one of Phillips's heroines was modeled after his sister. The killer then also shot himself in the head. David Graham Phillips is interred in the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.